29 June 2016

Life without a Landline

I didn't actually turn off our landline until late last week. I was a bit scared to. After sending a notice to our friends and family, I changed our phone number with our credit card companies and a few other places but I kept worrying that I'd forgotten something important.

Now that the landline is gone, it's a bit quieter at home. We used to get several spam calls each day (marketing calls, surveys, political and charitable solicitations); now we don't get any. When I first opened my Google Voice account there were a few spam texts, but after I blocked those senders we were not bothered again.

One thing that annoyed me about not having a landline was needing to carry my phone around the apartment. I generally keep my phone in a purse, not my pocket. I don't always have a pocket.

Then I remembered reading about connect to cell cordless phones. These phones use Bluetooth to link with your cell so it can stay in one place charging and you use the cordless handsets strategically placed around your home to make and receive calls. You don't have to have a landline to use them. I ended up buying a VTech model and it is working well for my phone. Unfortunately, even though it is supposed to be able to connect to two different cell phones and even appears to do so (the linking process goes smoothly), Victor's phone doesn't make the VTech handset ring.

Not a big deal, though, since Victor is used to carrying his cell phone everywhere.

We haven't had much occasion to use Google Voice yet, but I did give the number to a department store salesperson a couple weeks ago and thus had an opportunity to experience this cool feature in which Googlebrain transcribes voicemail and texts it to you.

The transcription was perfect! We are definitely living in the future!